Editorial: Politics doesn't make for great public safety policy

AFTER a long winter's break, students arriving to schools across Los Angeles this morning were greeted by police officers - a feel-good change in the wake of the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut.

This reactionary move may ease the minds of a few parents, but it amounts to little more than the Los Angeles Police Department making an important policy decision based on politics. This is not the way the LAPD should do business.

It will be interesting to see how long this new policy of taking LAPD officers off the streets for the sake of checking in at Los Angeles Unified School District's campuses for a few minutes will last.

Yes, the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary was tragic and shows that a madman could appear at any school in the Unites States. But with no recent shooting at Southern California schools, what exactly is the LAPD and LAUSD trying to achieve? What more can LAPD officers do that school police officers already assigned to LAUSD campuses can't?

Coincidentally, LAPD's beefed up school patrols started the same day a Spanish teacher from Roosevelt High School was sentenced to five years probation for having sex with two male students at her Montebello home between September 2009 and November 2010. Gabriela Cortez, 43, was also barred from teaching or being in the presence of minors without another adult present.

Cortez is just the latest example of teachers who breach the trust of students and parents - a far more likely crime to occur in Los Angeles than a school shooting. It seems our students need greater protection from educators rather than from their peers. That's why it's time for state lawmakers to reconsider legislation that would make it easier to fire teachers accused of misconduct.

The initial measure proposed by state Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima, died in committee last June, even though it was a common sense idea.

Streamlining the process for terminating wayward instructors seems to be a more intelligent way to keep kids safe rather than deploying officers to campuses that are already relatively safe.